In the downtown theater where, as a boy, Parks had to sit in the balcony with other blacks, he ate dinner Saturday next to the governor of Kansas. Down front.

"Gordon, welcome to the front row," Gov. Kathleen Sebelius told the famed photographer to the applause of about 350 people at the Liberty Theater.

The banquet was the culmination of the town's first Gordon Parks Celebration of Culture and Diversity.

More than 200 people attended four days of lectures, panel discussions, movie screenings and reminiscing. The crowd included about a dozen members of Parks' family who had come from several states and presented a bronze bust of him to the town's Mercy Health Center.

The Associated Press

Artist Gordon Parks, 91, reflects on his childhood in Fort Scott during a visit with the media at Lake Fort Scott. Parks was the first black photographer at Life magazine and the first black person to direct a major Hollywood production, "The Learning Tree," which was filmed in Fort Scott. Parks was in the area for The Gordon Parks Celebration of Culture and Diversity at Fort Scott Community College.

"I have a strange feeling back here," Parks said at the presentation. "I can't explain it. It's a strange mixture of the tragedies and the good things that happened here."

It was Parks' first visit to his hometown in more than 20 years.

A gala in his honor ended the celebration Saturday, sponsored by the new Gordon Parks Center for Culture and Diversity at Fort Scott Community College.

The 91-year-old Parks, still recovering from a hernia operation less than a month ago, defied doctors' orders to attend the four-day celebration. When he was told what the town was planning, he told family and friends: "I want to go home. They're waiting for me there."

That attitude was a change, because Parks' relationship with his hometown has been rocky.

The youngest son of Sarah and Andrew Jackson Parks fled Fort Scott when he was 15, angry at a segregated town that treated its black residents miserably.

"Anger made me more determined that I was going to make it in the world," he said.

He certainly did, becoming, among other things, the first black director of a major motion picture, "The Learning Tree," which he shot in Fort Scott in 1968. He also was a staff photographer for Life magazine, Kansan of the Year, a composer and poet.

Being back in Kansas, Parks said, had caused memories to flood back. He recalled how, when he came back to film "The Learning Tree," he mentioned that he was dismayed that his mother and father were buried in a segregated portion of the town's cemetery. A few days later, a representative from the mayor's office offered to exhume his parents and move them into another part of the cemetery. No, thank you, Parks told them.

"I said, 'My mother would hate that,' " he said.

Former Fort Scott Mayor Ken Lunt led a volunteer effort in recent years to rehabilitate the part of the cemetery where Parks' parents are buried. He also began a campaign to win back Parks' affection. Within the next three months, the town's Mercy Health Center will have 52 of Parks' photographs and become the second-largest permanent exhibit of Parks' work next to the Library of Congress, Lunt said.